Abridge AI Inc., a startup that develops artificial intelligence software for medical professionals, is reportedly raising $250 million in new funding.
The Information on Thursday cited sources as saying that technology investor Elad Gil and IVP are set to lead the investment. Alphabet Inc.’s CapitalG fund is expected to participate as well. The round will reportedly close at a pre-money valuation of $2.5 billion, a significant jump from the estimated $200 million that Abridge was worth last year.
Physicians spend a significant portion of their working days writing medical notes. Moreover, they have to manually upload every note to their hospital’s EHR system, a type of application used to manage electronic health records. Pittsburgh-based Abridge offers an AI platform that promises to automate most of the task.
The company’s platform is accessible through mobile app that physicians activate before every doctor’s appointment. The software records the conversation, transcribes it and then uses the transcript to automatically generate medical notes.
Abridge doesn’t fully automate the note-taking process. After creating a draft, physicians must check it for accuracy and make edits as necessary. A feature called Linked Evidence links each AI-generated sentence in a medical note to the transcript excerpt from which it was generated, which makes it easier to spot errors.
Abridge’s platform is integrated into Epic, the most widely-used application for managing electronic health records. Physicians can edit AI-generated medical notes in Epic’s mobile client without juggling multiple tabs, which speeds up the workflow.
Abridge promises to automate up to 91% of the work involved in creating medical notes. According to the company, that translates to 70 hours of saved time per clinician per month. The result is that medical professionals can dedicate a larger portion of their work days to delivering patient care, as well as create more detailed notes than they would otherwise have time for.
Abridge’s platform is powered by internally-developed AI models. The company says that its algorithms understand over 14 languages and clinical terms across more than 50 medical specialties. Moreover, Abridge claims that its technology significantly outperforms other AI models optimized for healthcare tasks.
This week’s report that Abridge is seeking fresh funding comes about eight months after the company closed its most recent $150 million round. At the time, it stated that a portion of the capital will go towards developing new AI models. The company was planning to use those models both to enhance its existing medical note platform and power new, yet-unannounced products.
Another $250 million on the books would make it easier for Abridge to shoulder the significant costs associated with building custom AI models. Additionally, the investment would put the company in a better position to address the growing competition it’s facing from fellow AI startups. Suki AI Inc., which provides a rival tool for generating medical notes, raised $70 million in funding earlier earlier this week.